Denis Excoffier wrote:
jupiter% tar tvf /dev/null --owner=no-such-owner /etc/passwd tar: no-such-owner: Invalid owner tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
...
By the way, it seems to me that it should be possible to have these commands (above) succeed. After all, the tar file is not dedicated to local consumption: the local existence or nonexistence of any group or owner is not sufficient to forbid the creation of such a tar file.
Tar format needs to store both the numeric UID/GID and the user/group name. If the name cannot be looked up in the local system database, it has no way to generate a suitable ID. Cheers, Tim
